The blade cost tenpence; the man it killed had been worth kingdoms.

The Poisoned Chalice: When George Villiers Met His Maker

The Duke of Buckingham's Last Morning and England's Most Hated Man

England's most powerful duke rose from obscurity to royal favorite—and fell to an assassin's blade amid public celebration.

The blade entered just below the left collarbone, a single thrust from a tenpenny knife purchased for mere shillings. George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham—the most powerful and despised man in England—staggered backward in the crowded parlor of the Greyhound Inn in Portsmouth, gasping a single word: 'Villain.'

It was the morning of August 23, 1628, but the roots of this assassination stretched back to a different June day four years earlier. On June 4, 1624, James I had signed the charter that elevated his beloved favorite to the pinnacle of English nobility, creating him Duke of Buckingham—a title that made commoners' blood boil and courtiers' teeth grind.

Villiers had risen from obscure Leicestershire gentry to become the intimate companion of two successive kings. James I's infatuation was an open secret; the aging monarch called him 'Steenie' after St. Stephen, whose face was said to shine like an angel's. When Charles I inherited the throne, he inherited Buckingham too—and the duke's catastrophic foreign policy adventures.

The failed expedition to relieve the Huguenots at La Rochelle had cost thousands of English lives. Parliament seethed. Pamphlets circulated calling…

💡 After Buckingham's assassination, John Felton received so many gifts and marriage proposals in prison that authorities had to restrict his visitors—he was treated more like a celebrity than a condemned murderer.